RE: From atheism to tentative agnosticism
July 2, 2013 at 7:28 pm
(This post was last modified: July 2, 2013 at 7:30 pm by Inigo.)
apophenia Wrote:As noted in the other thread, you're equivocating. Your syllogism requires that morality "be" instruction or favoring, and that instruction or favoring "be" an agent. When you step away from that strict formulation, your syllogism and argument falls apart.
Let's make the necessary changes and see: {the original in curly braces}
1. Morality is composed of the instructions or favorings of one thing toward another thing; {Morality instructs/favours/commands}
2. Only a thing which is an agent can favor or instruct; {Only an agent can instruct/favour/command}
Therefore, morality is an agent. {Morality is an agent}
At best, this formulation is incomplete; at worst, it's an obvious non-sequitur. It isn't 'morality' doing the instructing or favoring, but the agent behind it.
You can't show my argument to involve an equivocation by writing down a different argument. Show how the original argument equivocates, don't replace it with one of your own.
Here's one argument:
1. Morality instructs
2. Only an agent can instruct
3. Morality is an agent
There's no equivocation in that argument. Perhaps you dislike 'morality instructs' and prefer 'morality is composed of instructions'. Fine.
1. Morality is composed of instructions and favourings
2. Only an agent can instruct and favour
3. Morality is composed of the instructions and favourings of an agent
Neither argument establishes that morality is a god, or is composed of the instructions of a god. What these arguments establish is that morality - or the instructions constitutive of morality - need an agent in order to exist.
So your next point - that the argument does not capture what is different about a moral instruction as opposed to some other one - is just tedious. I know! It wasn't supposed to. Morality has more than one essential feature! One of them is that it instructs. Another is that those instructions have inescapable rational authority. It is satisfying that SECOND feature that requires positing a god.
You can show anyone's case for anything to be incomplete if you just wilfully ignore or overlook large parts of it!!